January 2, 2008

It snowed during the night! And, it’s snowing like a ********** right now! Everything is so beautiful.

The temperature is about 19 degrees right now, but it is really wonderful outside. There is little traffic on the roads, but a few adventurous souls have ventured out. My next-door neighbors are included in that number. A few minutes ago, I saw a large semi-tractor/trailer backing down the mountain road. I suppose the driver realized that it was too slick to try to go to the manufacturing plant a mile or so up the mountain.

December 31, 2007

So much has happened since “the move is on” that I really don’t know where to start. But, I’ll just ramble.

I have moved out of Hell and into Heaven! Don’t ever let anyone tell you that hell is forever. It just takes the will to get out.

I absolutely love my new home in the mountains. The air is clean and fresh. The view is fabulous. My neighbors are wonderful. My little rural community is marvelous. I LOVE this place!

Mrs. Mann won’t be making the move on a permanent basis for a few more months, but will be here at every opportunity. Right now, she is here and we are having a blast. We have just finished a visit from “The Dumplin”, and have another week before the Mrs. has to go back to Hell. But, it won’t be long before she will be back for another “visit”.

Projects around here have been a little slow in getting finished. I spent 10 weeks waiting for Comcast to hook up my cable so I could have internet! That, my friends, sucked to a very high degree. It finally took a call to the county mayor’s office and a referral to high management with Comcast to get some action. After that, it only took a week. The service we have received since the hook-up has been very good. It really is nice to be back on-line.

Okay boys and girls, it’s time for me to end this one. I’ll try not to be so long on the next one. And, I’m going to find a primer to help me figure out how to post some pics.

August 14, 2007

The weather here has been awful! Yesterday the temperature was 103 degrees and muggy. But, there is better weather in sight. The mountains are closer than ever.

We now have a contract to sell our house here. It will be closing within the next two weeks. We also have a contract to purchase a house in the mountains. It will close shortly after the one here closes. So, we are into packing and moving hot and heavy. Today will probably be my last day at work for awhile. My priorities are to get us moved out of here and get the house in the mountains closed and ready for habitation. Then, of course, will come the move of our stuff.

Mrs. Mann will continue at her present place of employment. The conditions there have deteriorated even more than they were already! It is really unbelievable just how stupid people with advanced college degrees can be. More on that later.

By September 1, I will probably be in the mountains, even if only temporarily. I plan to go there a few days before the closing to get utilities transferred, etc. Then, after the transfer of ownership, there will be many things to do before an actual move takes place. There will be appliances to buy and install, blinds to buy and install, and numerouse little cleaning jobs to be done before habitation can take place.

For informational purposes, the new house is located within a mile of the foot of the mountains. From the back deck, one has an unobstructed view of Green Mountain! And, in the late afternoon, the house shades the deck making sitting there very pleasant. The house is slightly smaller than the one we presently live in, but still 3 bedrooms and 2 baths. It is new construction, being completed in May of this year. It sits on a half acre lot along a country road about 8 or 9 miles out of town. There is another recently occupied house on one side and a horse pasture with two horses on the other side. A farmer’s hay field adjoins us in the back. When we were there recently for about 15 minutes in the middle of the morning, we never even heard the sound of a car anywhere in hearing distance. Just the sounds of birds singing, bees buzzing, and the occasional barking of a dog or lowing of a cow! Sweet!

August 5, 2007

So much has happened in the last week that is of such significance in my and my family’s lives. The move to the mountains is in full swing! And moving much faster than I would have imagined just a couple months ago.

Just a few minutes ago, we signed an agreement to sell our house! We will be closing on it and moving out within a month, probably much sooner. For the time being, we will be moving in with Mrs. Mann’s mother and putting our furnishings in storage. The storage unit was rented today and is already collecting boxes. We plan to be working all day tomorrow on storing things that are not used in our daily activities. This house is already beginning to look like a train wreck.

On Tuesday, we will be heading back to the mountains to do more house searching. Hopefully, now that we have a contract on our present residence, we will be able to expand our searching to homes a little further up the food chain than we had previously considered. That should bring many more possibles into the list to be examined. It is really an exciting time.

For those of you that like to visit on holidays, you had better make plans to have a mountain in the background for any visits around the holidays this year! Don’t that sound grand? Hehehehehe…

Anyway, lots going on. I’ll try to do a better job of letting ya’ll know what is happening. I promise pics when we get something.

July 24, 2007

I guess it’s time for me to begin to catch up. The problem with that is: Where the hell do I start?

We have been very busy lately. That is probably quite an understatement! Our relocation plans have taken a serious turn toward “right now!” in the last few weeks. After spending a week looking at property in some of the most beautiful parts of the USofA, we have stepped up our plans. We actually made an offer on a house, but the offer was rejected in favor of a competing offer that was submitted at the same time. We are going back next week after our trip to IU for the daughter’s opera. Hopefully, we will find something else we want to bid for.

Closer to home, we haven’t even put our house on the market yet and have a good prospect. Our next door neighbors are looking for a house! They have been living with a parent next door to us since Katrina took their homes away in St. Bernard Parish. They want to be close to him to assist with his needs, but haven’t been able to find anything close by. They were flabbergasted when they heard we were going to sell our house. Negotiations will soon begin(perhaps today!).

On the fun front, I have now joined the ever-growing group of Americans that own eeeeeeeeeevilllll black rifles. I purchased an AR-15 in .223 but haven’t had a chance to shoot it yet. I am waiting until I have the time to break it in right. It is really a dandy piece. When I figure out how to, I will post some pics.

June 11, 2007

For some time I have had the opinion that nothing of consequence happens in this country if it is not orchestrated, or at least condoned, by the mainstream media or by lawyers. Both groups will deny that this is the case, but numerous events point in the same direction.

Last month, I was in Columbia, SC for a rally that took place in conjunction with the Republican presidential candidates’ debate. The rally was in the coliseum next door to the hall where the debate was being televised. There were around 8,000 people present at the rally to promote The Fair Tax, HB 25, that would replace the federal income tax with a consumption tax(national sales tax). As the rally progressed, several of the candidates, including Hunter, Coxe, Tancredo, and Huckabee, spoke in support of the movement to the assembled crowd at the rally. There seemed to be little, if any, news coverage of the rally in-spite of the large and very vocal crowd.

As the rally progressed, the crowd left the coliseum and crossed the block to the hall where the debate was going to be held in a short time. Now, there were at least 7,000 people on the street, dressed in Fairtax.org t-shirts and waving signs and chanting and singing as we(yes, I was in the throng) circled the block where the news networks had set up operation. There were about two dozen scraggly looking anti-war protesters and perhaps fifty or more supporters of various candidates on hand. All of them were soon completely lost in the huge crowd of Fairtax supporters. A few of the candidate’s supporters asked questions of some members of the crowd and were surprised to find out that we were not all bussed in for the event by organizers. We completely surrounded the news trucks, beating on the doors and demanding attention. The Columbia P.D. soon realized they were not prepared to control such a crowd, but also realized we were being orderly and posed no threat.

The demonstration continued for about an hour, during which time people inside the hall for the debate were seen pressed up against the windows to see what all the commotion was about. It was obviously a major event to anyone who was there.

The next day, I eagerly picked up a local newspaper to read about it. To my complete shock, there wasn’t even a mention of it. I checked the Drudge Report to see if it was covered by the MSM. Not a mention. But, there were several stories about the anti-war protesters that were there.

NO COVERAGE! None! 7,000 people(others estimated 8,500) in a vocal and visual demonstration, WERE TOTALLY IGNORED BY THE MSM!

Is my point becoming clear now? Am I wrong? The MSM are not behind the Fairtax movement, so it doesn’t exist!

It’s time to wake up, people! WE DON’T COUNT! It’s time to do something to show them that we DO.

June 9, 2007

I was half listening to Sean Hannity recently when I suddenly had a flash of insight into the way I think our government works. Sean was speaking about the Republican Party and how it is different from the Democrat Party. I don’t remember his words specifically, but I do remember the content and my reaction to it.

Sean was posing questions, rhetorical questions, regarding which party should be supported. As he went through his list of topics, including such things as; “Which party will fight Islamic terrorists?”, “Which party will protect our borders?”, etc, it occurred to me that there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the parties. It also occurred to me, in that instant flash, that the two parties actually are working together in a complicated, well-choreographed dance to accomplish goals and objectives that are not in the interest of the citizens of the U.S., but are designed to garner them(government) more and more power over us. Let me try to explain what I mean.

The Democrats were in power when I became aware of government in my early twenty’s. I realized at some point in my adulthood that they were sucking the life out of me through taxation, but was too busy fighting to maintain my lifestyle to think much about it. I just worked harder and more to make up for the increasing tax load.

During the Reagan years, I realized that I really was conservative and decided to become more active in politics. I changed my voter registration from Democrat to Republican and began to keep up with elections and candidates. When the Republicans took control of Congress after the 1994 elections, I was convinced that a revolution was underway that would take the burden off those of us that worked. But alas, Bill Clinton was President and stood in the way of Republican progress.

Then, when Dubya came along, I thought that here was the chance to finally have a breakthrough for producers. After six years of Dubya in the White House and a Republican Congress, not a damn thing has been done! We have McCain-Feingold that is designed to help Democrats and incumbents, “No child left behind” which is simply a huge social give-away and a gift to the teacher’s unions that should be called “the keep ’em stupid” act, and the prescription drug program that is the largest welfare give-away ever!

Under Dubya and the Republicans, we have the largest increase in the size of government in the history of our country. We are in a war with Islam (I know, it’s the “War on Terror”, … bullshit…) that we won’t fight to win. We fight little skirmishes and let them escape back into their “safe” zones rather than leveling any town that harbors the roaches. The Republicans gave us “tax cuts” that expire, of all things! With both houses and the Presidency, why couldn’t we have tax cuts that don’t expire unless they really didn’t want us to have cuts at all?

If these goons are our friends, who needs enemies?

And now, Hannity(who I really like, btw) wants to blow smoke up my ass! Give me a break! The Republicans were defeated because they wanted to be! They knew they could better advance their personal objectives if the Democrats regained power. The Republicans lost because they were not conservative! And they still aren’t!

The Democrats, through their mouthpieces the MSM, have pushed the fantasy that the Republicans lost because they weren’t listening to their “progressive” constituents. That idea has absolutely no basis in fact. The Democrats that ousted Republican incumbents mostly ran on conservative platforms.

With those anecdotes in mind, consider the following:

Those elected to the Senate or Congress want to get reelected and gain more of whatever it is that motivates them(power, graft, personal wealth, whatever).

They are willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish their goals, or they would never have been elected in the first place.

The political party system has evolved into a system that prevents those from outside the two parties to have any significant influence.

The mainstream news media(known from now on as “MSM”) has almost complete control over what is relayed to the dumb masses and has a socialist agenda due to the large number of journalism majors educated in socialist schools in the U.S. being in charge of the companies that comprise it.

There is a large underclass in this country made up of people with low I.Q. The percentage of the population that this underclass comprises is growing because they reproduce at a higher rate than the general population and because of the influx of uneducated and unskilled illegal aliens from Mexico and Latin America. These unskilled and uneducated people lack the skills and education because they have a lower I.Q. than the general population. Otherwise, they would have a successful life in their home country and would not want to come here for menial jobs. These people are easily deceived with shallow rhetoric, empty promises, and outright lies.

The primary method used by politicians in Washington to remain in power is through income redistribution. They take resources, in the form of taxes, from those who produce and pay them out in the form of “programs” to those that produce less. (Tax the wealthy and pay to the “poor”) People of high I.Q. tend to be more productive, although work ethic has a larger impact on production.

People with a low I.Q. did not get that way due to poverty, they are impoverished because they have a low I.Q. (mostly due to heredity) or they have a poor work ethic(lazy bums).

There are now more voters that are non-productive that can be controlled by the MSM than voters that are productive.

With the aforementioned factors in mind, all congress-weasels want the same thing, but they are elected by different constituencies. For example, Congressman A is elected from a liberal district that always elects Democrats. The only thing he has to do is continue to spout the Democrat line and “bring home the bacon”, and he gets reelected. Congressman B is a Democrat, but is elected in a district that is about evenly split between conservatives and liberals. She has to “act” conservative to get elected because only conservatives would vote for anything other than a Democrat. She can support conservative legislation in congress with her party’s blessing as long as the legislation has no chance of passing without her vote. This makes her maintain some support among conservatives in her district without alienating liberals. However, she is always there to vote with her party when every vote counts.

Congressman C is a Republican from a conservative district. It is not likely that a liberal or a Democrat will be able to unseat him. He can be a mouthpiece for the conservative movement without actually doing anything that will forward the conservative movement. In his position, he actually has more power if his party is in the minority, because he can pose as an “opposition” voice to those evil liberals(Democrats) in almost every issue without having any impact on the legislation.

So, with these (admittedly highly simplified) scenarios, those who want big government or more power over the people will succeed every time! Since they are all working together, Democrats and Republicans, for the same goals, they can decide beforehand how the issue will proceed and which issues will be sacrificed in order to keep up the charade of actually having two parties with opposing agendas.

All of which brings me to my epiphany. We don’t have a say-so about what goes on in Washington! That may come as a shock to some of you, but think about it. Since when have you been able to call your congressman and talk to him or her? Who do you talk to? You talk to an aid. That aid has his own agenda that he pursues through his closeness to the congress-weasel. Nothing gets through that he doesn’t want to get through.

I have been to Washington. The congress-weasels are treated like royalty! After awhile, I think they begin to believe they really are royalty. And we are simply their subjects, the dumb masses.

I don’t believe this country can return to a free society under the present system. And trying to change that system or replace it with another would be catastrophic.

June 8, 2007

I would like to introduce myself.

I am a retired LEO living in a southern state with my wife of 34 years. My children are grown and leading productive lives. I am college educated with a bachelor’s degree and some post-graduate study. Some would describe me as upbeat and cheerful. Others might describe me as opinionated and radical. Perhaps all of those words are valid in describing me. No one would describe me as passive.

I love life! Every day that I live is wonderful. Some are better than others, I will admit. But if the sun comes up and I am sucking in air, it’s a great day.

My freedom and my family and friends are the most important things in my life. That said, I will give my life to safeguard any and all of them if need be.

To those who happen along to read my ravings, I hope you will join me in debating topics that are relevant to our freedoms as Americans and to our future. At the very least, I hope you will be entertained, educated, and/or inspired to action.